Rules for Manuscript Submission

The email address for manuscript submissions is: kalpabiswa.kalpabijnan@gmail.com

Word count:
Short story – less than 5000 words
Long story – between 5000-10000 words
Novel – within 20000 words

Fiction with more than 20,000 words can be sent directly to Kalpabiswa Publications (kalpabiswa.publications@gmail.com) for printing. If nominated by the editorial board, it may be published in book form by Kalpabiswa Publications.

Honorarium – Kalpabiswa magazine is completely free to read on Kalpabiswa website. The eBook sales of various regular issues of Kalpabiswa Patrika are spent on domain, web hosting, and magazine-related expenses. Therefore, it is not possible to give any Honorarium for contributing to regular issues.
Contributions received from the pre-booking of the Kalpbiswa Durga Puja Edition eBook, are used as an honorarium for the Festive issue’s writers, artists, and other contributors (editing, proofing, and website). The amount of that honorarium depends on the eBook sales of that year.

Subject – Only works of fiction, fantasy, and speculative horror are published in Kalpabiswa. Please refer to points 12 and 13 for details.

Language -Bengali and English. Any translation must be accompanied by written permission from the original author.

Copyright – We reserve the first license of electronic print of Bengali and English works (website and eBook) from the author. If a story is selected for the ‘Best of Kalpabiswa’ collection printed edition, Kalpabiswa Publications will make a separate contract with the author for it.

Time Duration – Kindly wait at least three months after submitting a manuscript unless it is on a special issue or invited work. If you do not receive the acceptance letter by then, please send an inquiry email to kalpabiswa.kalpabijnan@gmail.com. Kalpabiswa does not allow personal inquiries to any editorial board members. If you want to publish the story in another magazine, you have to let us know formally and withdraw the submission from us. For the editor’s opinion about the submission, you can send queries only after receiving the editorial decision.

Medium – Kindly note that submissions in the categories of Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror, typed in Times New Roman font (size 12, 1.5 spacing) and submitted in Microsoft Word or Rich Text format, clearly specifying the category, are recommended. The only email
address for submissions is kalpabiswa.kalpabijnan@gmail.com; submissions through any other medium or in person will not be accepted.

General Guidelines

1. Kalpabiswa generally does not accept anonymous or pseudonymous submissions. Use your legal name as the author of the story and article. If you are unable to do it, then inform the editorial board beforehand with the reason.
2. Please provide your professional identity, address, phone number, and brief literary work details along with the submission email. Author identification helps us fight various types of spam emails, off-topic emails, and plagiarism.
3. We are willing to publish previously unpublished original science fiction, fantasy, and speculative horror stories. If the story has been published in any other magazine (online or printed), Facebook group, blog, or audio story before Kalpabiswa, you must mention it.
If the text has been published in a lesser-known magazine or has not been widely distributed on the Internet, it may be nominated for republishing in the Kalpabiswa. The editorial board’s decision in this regard is final.
4. Please ensure that no part of your submitted work is unlawful, harmful to society, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, obscene, abusive, hate-mongering, invasive of another’s personal life or privacy, hateful, or racially, religiously or otherwise offensive.
5. The copyright of all works published on the Kalpabiswa Site (“published” means distributed for public reading on the Internet) shall remain with the respective author.
6. If the author of any work published by Kalpabiswa has spoken religiously or racially provocative words in the public media, which are likely to harm the society, or is found to be involved in any serious criminal activity, drug use, or crime against women and children, either any of his works have damaged the reputation of Kalpbiswa or there is a possibility of damage, the editors have the full right to remove the article from the Kalpabiswa site. The decision of the editors in this regard will be final.
7. The author grants Kalpabiswa unlimited Internet distribution rights and non-exclusive copyright of electronic distribution of the work for as long as Kalpabiswa Magazine exists through the Kalpabiswa website. This copyright includes web publication, publication of links and summaries of works on other websites and Facebook, sending links and summaries of works via email, WhatsApp, and other communications, publication of ebooks through mobi and epub, and publication of podcasting with author’s permission.

8. Kalpabiswa’s editorial board and management committee have the final say on what kind of content can be included in the magazine.
9. Every submission sent to Kalpabiswa goes through the nomination process, before the submission is nominated, the author may be asked to revise some parts, also the editorial board will have the right to revise some minor parts. For disputes in Bengali spelling, the decision of the editors is final according to Kalpabiswa’s policy.
10. Kalpabiswa does not allow dual submission at the same time.
11. Translation Literature – From May 2021, Kalpabiswa has stopped publishing any translations without the permission of the original author. To translate an author’s copyrighted text, it is mandatory to first obtain permission from the author. The editors of Kalpabiswa will try to help you to collect permission. However, Kalpabiswa can’t give any payment to the original author for translation rights. The translator’s honorarium will be determined according to the previous section about payment. This guidelines will be the same for both Bengali-to-English and English-to-Bengali translations.
12. Acceptable submission types-
One or more unpublished writings in Bengali or English in the categories of
science fiction, fantasy, or speculative horror that belongs to the following categories –

• Novels
• Story
• Translation of foreign/Indian stories in other languages*
• Poems or rhymes
• Limerick
• Science news pieces
• Essay
• Comics or cartoons**
• Short stories
• Drama based on science fiction
• Science fiction film, book or game reviews
*Submitted translated or inspired stories must cite the source (even if the story is out of copyright) and must be accompanied by permission from the author of the original story (if the source is copyrighted).
**Comics or cartoons category should be sent with a sample page or pilot page first, if selected then only the complete work should be provided.

13. What kind of stories will likely get rejected –

(Remember this list is just an example, the decision of the editors is final)
• Ghost stories
• Story of Tantra
• Miracle stories
• Social poetry or nursery rhymes

• Children’s stories (If you have questions about the definition of a children’s story, check out the recent stories published in the fiction, none of them are juvenile)
• A story with a plot that forcefully implant irrational humanity into robots
• Stories with incorrect science facts
• Essays without proper references
• Stories in any other genre not related to science fiction/fantasy/horror
• Use readily available science fiction tropes (robots, time travel, aliens, etc.) to force the plot of the story.
• Politically motivated stories where propaganda takes precedence over plot.
• Science fiction stories copying Professor Shonku.

14. The editorial board of Kalpabiswa shall have the right to add or amend new rules subject to regular review of these rules.

Updated: 9.11.2021